The Nation's Pulse / Blood and Gore: TV and the Law
Rusthoven, Peter J.
"The Nation's Pulse / Blood and Gore: TV and the Law" - shift in the balance of power at the agency and appellate-court levels. The Agency for Consumer Advocacy, by impressing a new and proper standard on the work of the regulatory agencies, could...
...On the one hand stand the peculiar mentalities of network programming executives, a group seemingly devoted to demonstrating theinherent limits of television as a medium...
...The jury, apparently unimpressed with the thesis that the victim had really been slain by a television set instead of the vacuous young man in the dock, proceeded to convict...
...Today, in many jurisdictions, liability can be avoided by showing that the act for which prosecution is being made was somehow "the product of a mental disease or defect," a concept which defies definition or limitation in an era in which all of us are told we carry assorted neuroses and/or psychoses in our psychological baggage...
...Practically all the action occurs inside the dance hall and the atmospheric possibilities of the setting are fully realized...
...As vulnerable as these people are, the movie never sets them up for easy laughs, say, as ugly caricatures...
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...Lest the lay reader be misled, this rule is not the exclusive property of such regions as California —it is presently the law, for example, in more prosaic jurisdictions such as Indiana...
...Compiled by British scriptwriter and playwright John Haggarty, edited and with an introduction by Benjamin A. Rogge...
...David Everitt is a writer living in New York City...
...The overcrowding, the brutality, and the hard-edged idiosyncratic language are deftly orchestrated...
...They are convinced that those who oppose their position must be insensitive and reactionary types, who lack both sympathy for their less fortunate fellows and understanding of the complexities of human motivation and behavior...
...To be sure, all of us are to one degree or another the product of a near infinite number and variety of influences, some of which are beyond our control...
...the police lieutenant on "Kojak," on the theory that the murder of Elinor Haggart had traced one of the plots of the weekly series...
...None of us, in short, can claim to be his own creator, a fact which should yield a greater degree ofhumility than most of us can claim...
...She can only see this, though, when she dances with a man who is nothing at all like her husband...
...Rubin's defense proved unsuccessful...
...To the credit of the presiding jurist and the twelve men (and women) good and true who sat in judgment on Ronny Zamora, Mr...
...First, the nebulous concept of "irresistible impulse" crept in as an additional reason for escaping criminal sanction...
...A vastly persuasive case for capitalist theory and practice"—Barron's...
...Ellis Rubin, whose previous legal services include the successful effort to end the National Football League's TV-blackout of sold-out home games, determined that television had a role to play in criminal law as well...
...During the middle sequence, for instance, there are many shots using the reflections of mirrors in a dance studio...
...Quite simply, the assumption that underlies the very existence of such laws is also part and parcel of the entire political philosophy on which this Republic was founded—namely, that individuals are and should be treated as adults who are responsible for the consequences of what they do, rather than as children whose acts are merely the product of chance and circumstance beyond rational control...
...But whatever the superficial novelty of the defense, at bottom I believe that Rubin's analysis was not, in this era, very original at all...
...Walken is always intriguing and he somehow manages not to be unlikable...
...Hardcover $7.95, Paperback $1.95...
...Of course, the people who are sympathetic to such efforts, and who were presumably sympathetic to Mr...
...But we have determined, and the experience of hundreds of years has demonstrated its wisdom, that it is better both individually and in our collective existence as a civilized people to emphasize the perspective from which human beings can meaningfully be viewed as independent and responsible persons...
...The play by Miguel Pinero is translated into a movie that is tightly constructed and vivid in almost every respect...
...But for all its bite and clamor, the film ultimately seems strangely unaffecting...
...The more troublesome aspect of the Rubin defense, however, lies not in its recitation of the trendy platitudes of TV violence, but rather in its easy assumption that the idea of individual responsibility is one lightly to be discarded...
...The results of this tempestuous struggle among intellectual midgets are difficult to gauge...
...When popular music stars are included in an otherwise downbeat, realistic film, one cannot help but suspect that the casting choices were influenced by something other than uncompromising verisimilitude—namely, good old-fashioned box office hype...
...I am not, I should emphasize, without some sympathy for Ronny Zamora, though I confess to deeper feelings on behalf of Now ikvailable: The Roots of Capitalism By John Chamberlain A provocative look at the intellectual forces and practical accomplishments that have created American capitalism...
...Every freedom we cherish rests on that decision, and relies for its continued existence on the reaffirmation of that fundamental choice by each generation of citizens...
...Zamora and a friend, also fifteen, broke into the Haggart residence last June, were confronted by its elderly inhabitant, and proceeded to shoot her to death with her own pistol...
...The pother surrounding this topic is one of the more irksome of the last decade, if only because it is so difficult for reasonable individuals to feel comfortable with either side of the debate...
...His first novel, Raven Bravo, will be published by Popular Library next spring...
...The cast of unknowns is uniformly convincing, playing off each other with a seething intensity...
...And preserving the theatrical framework appropriately conveys their enforced claustrophobia...
...In the past Jacobi has proven himself to be a hilarious burlesque-style comic, but in Roseland he shows he is capable of revealing the reverse side of that persona...
...The contributors are John Dos Passos, Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr., Milton Friedman, Friedrich A. Hayek, Joseph Wood Krutch, James C. Malin, William M. McGovern, Felix Morley, Helmut Schoeck, Richard M. Weaver, Roger J. Williams and Conway Zirkle...
...Hardcover $8.00...
...Specifically, Rubin contended that responsibility for the fatal deed lay not with his youthful client, but rather with television...
...In essence, their argument consists of self-righteous invocation of First Amendment pieties, advanced as justification for the steady diet of nauseous trash with which they flood the airwaves...
...Over the last 20 years or so, however, the insanity defense has become at best a mutant variant of its original form...
...The desperation of prison life has perhaps never been so graphically realized as in this film, no doubt because the author is an ex-con...
...Zamora's deed, I continue to respect his dignity as a responsible human actor who, like the rest of us, has both the right and duty to accept the consequences of what he does...
...Essays On Individuality Edited by Felix Morley Twelve distinguished writers and educators examine the place of the individual in contemporary society...
...He was instead a man of great philosophical and historical learning, and his literary style was widely admired...
...The camera work is evocative and unobtrusive, letting the characters speak for themselves...
...When another inmate plants a 28 The American Spectator January 1978...
...At the same time it must be said that, in the hands of anti-business ideologues or those who believe they can judge the consumer interest better than consumers themselves, the Agency for Consumer Advocacy could also accomplish great harm...
...The Roseland dance hall is depicted as a sort of Lonely Hearts Club where widows, widowers, and the like come to lose themselves in the separate world that revolves around social dancing...
...Even other white prisoners will have nothing to do with him...
...A defense psychiatrist opined that since Zamora had watched thousands of shootings and other acts of violence on TV, to him "death is just an incident in the total plot...
...Rubin appears to have lost his case, it is perhaps unkind not to award him passing marks for originality, and to some extent I do...
...In this connection, the argument advanced in Miami is indicative not only of recent developments in the field of criminal law, but also of more general and disturbing tendencies in our attitudes towards individuals and the responsibility they bear for their actions...
...If one continues to focus simply on the area of criminal law, the examples are plentiful...
...Zamora is unlikely to appreciate the distinction at this point, if he ever did...
...Part of that banality rests, of course, on Rubin's appeal to a theme grown trite and tiresome in recent years—the bogeyman of "TV violence...
...Their stories are skillfully entwined, complementing one another with increasing dramatic force...
...I submit, however, that the criminal law of a free society is imbued with a more basic symbolism and instruction, to which attention is too infrequently paid...
...The part is small but Mayfield establishes himself well in dramatically key spots...
...Since Mr...
...Abandonment of that perspective will indicate, finally, not greater sympathy and concern for the Ronny Zamoras among us, but rather that we have grown callous to the very ideas which make all of us free...
...They have simply misconceived the issue...
...Most of us, I hope, will take care to keep it in mind...
...Instead the picture hits upon an engrossing objectivity that leaves room for a natural irony and empathy...
...Consider the insanity defense...
...It is an offbeat, sensitive movie, a string of three stories that take place in a long-standing dance hall in New York City...
...As with the treatment of the characters, conceivably hackneyed business is made meaningful...
...What is so attractive about the film is that it makes something absorbing out of things that could have been trivial...
...And while an appeal may confidently be anticipated, it is quite likely that Ronny Zamora will spend a fair portion of his remaining years on the inside of a Florida prison...
...Two familiar names in the credits are singers Freddie Fender and Curtis Mayfield...
...Certainly his specific argument was a first for the courtroom...
...Rubin's arguments in Miami, tend to see themselves as concerned and compassionate folk...
...Much of the "evidence" offered by the flamboyant attorney was rejected as irrelevant by Judge Paul Baker...
...Like the scores of similar incidents which take place each year throughout the Republic, Zamora's act was not only brutal and senseless, but ultimately banal—an all too commonplace reminder of man's evil, and of how many of our fellow citizens live but a step removed from barbarism...
...Neither are they sentimentalized...
...If Zamora's crime lacked originality, his defense attorney tried very hard to see to it that his trial would not...
...In many ways, in fact, Rubin's contention was as banal as the act of his client...
...It is only a matter of time before the situation explodes and the prisoners carry out their own barbaric justice (there's nothing to stop them because the guards are just as determined to see that the newcomer gets what he deserves...
...In the opening sequence, Teresa Wright, the leading Hollywood ingenue of the 1940s, gives a glowing performance as a widow who imagines she can see her lost husband dancing with her in a mirror...
...Mayfield plays an older inmate who tries to maintain some sense of dignity in those around him...
...Nor do I dispute that the events in Zamora's life, including the hours he may have spent glued to the boob tube, had an impact on what he became and therefore on what he did...
...Foreword by Arthur Kemp...
...Unlike the usual use of this technique, in Roseland it enhances the scene rather than being merely tricky...
...The characters are very ordinary people who, in one way or another, often entertain notions of extraordinariness...
...These exceptions fit without difficulty into an overall framework that presumed that people could both understand and control their deeds, but recognized the possibility of instances where this presumption would not hold...
...Director James Ivory's visual style is consistently on target...
...According to Rubin, Zamora had spent so many hours watching "Kojak," "Baretta," and "Police Woman" that it had become impossible for him to tell right from wrong...
...On the other hand one finds those pompous purveyors of government nostrums for every ill which they imagine to exist among the populace, who fear that we are all simple folk whose lives will be forever altered for the worse by exposure to gunslingers on the 12-inch screen...
...Rubin even slapped a subpoena on Telly Savalas, who stars as Peter J. Rusthoven is an Indianapolis attorney...
...And they are also, in my view, sadly mistaken...
...While a criminal code exists to punish wrongdoers and to protect society from those unwilling to abide by agreed-upon 26 The American Spectator January 1978 norms, it serves as well a symbolic and instructive purpose...
...And serious arguments are advanced—or rather, arguments are advanced by people who take themselves quite seriously—that a rule of this sort is somehow compelled by the Constitution, a document whose infinite elasticity is presumed in order that such forward-looking theories may be brought under its aegis...
...Moreover, it is now the law in many states that once a defendant merely asserts the defense of insanity, the prosecution has the burden of proving sanity beyond a reasonable doubt in order to obtain a conviction...
...For generations, the rule was straightforward and sensible: To avoid criminal responsibility on the grounds of insanity, one had to demonstrate either a lack of capacity to distinguish between right and wrong, or a simple inability to control one's actions...
...The Agency for Consumer Advocacy, by impressing a new and proper standard on the work of the regulatory agencies, could accomplish this...
...meanwhile, the networks continue to spew forth a succession of "Mary Hartmans" and "Soaps" as examples of the new freedom of our age, while deemphasizing to a degree the simple mayhem of old...
...The few exterior shots are perfectly somber wintry compositions, a fitting contrast to the microcosm inside that seems to have its denizens under a spell...
...Christopher Walken plays the pivotal character, a pretty boy dancer turned kept man for an older woman...
...It is a credit to the ingenuity of the makers of Short Eyes that these glossy show-biz personalities fit in as well as they do with the decidedly unglossy proceedings...
...He is the one kind of criminal that other prisoners can feel morally superior to...
...It is a prime example of the continuing failure to heed Irving Kristol's admonition: that the fight to preserve a relatively free economy must be fought within rather than against the "new class" if it is to have any prospect at all for success...
...They are disturbed to see individuals "who really couldn't help it" placed in jail...
...Geraldine Chaplin, Helen Gallagher, and Joan Copeland are superb as the competitors...
...hort Eyes features another J enclosed world, the pent-up ferocity of a prison...
...THE TALKIES by David Everitt Roseland and Short Eyes Roseland was a critical suc- cess at the last New York Film Festival...
...THE NATION'S PULSE by Peter] Rusthoven Blood and Gore: TV and the Law Recently, a fifteen-year-old young man named Ronny Zamora went on trial in Miami for the murder of his eighty-two-year-old neighbor, Elinor Haggart...
...What I do dispute is that such things should make a difference in determining how we as a society respond to his murderous act...
...Hardcover $9.00, Paperback $3.00...
...In other words, while I have no respect for Mr...
...Part of that symbolism and instruction involves the spelling out of precisely which norms are considered important enough that their violation is deemed deserving of penal sanction, which in turn is one method of passing on to each succeeding generation of citizens the values that wisdom and experience have demonstrated to be worthy of protection and preservation...
...This fundamental concept has fared badly in recent times...
...Short Eyes" is the prison term for child molester...
...Lou Jacobi plays Wright's mismatch, a rambunctious jokester...
...The Wisdom of Adam Smith Adam Smith may have been the first great economist, but he was no dismal scientist...
...The most complex sequence is, the middle one, a subtle love quadrangle involving one man and three women...
...Our reputed saviors have given us the questionable delights of a so-called "Family Hour," enforced with gentle governmental suasion...
...The makeup of the characters who come to the Roseland is a fine balance between vanity and yearning...
...He is a slum kid who is content to get by on looks and an accomodating superficiality...
...A4 Indianapolis, Indiana 46250 The American Spectator January 1978 27 Elinor Haggart's friends and family...
...Unfortunately, this possibility has been substantially increased by the circumstance that those in a position to advance and execute the libertarian vision of the Agency's function have instead chosen to oppose it every (inevitable) step of the way...
...The Wisdom of Adam Smith brings together his most incisive and eloquent observations on subjects ranging from political and economic history to morals, philosophy, art, education, war and the American colonies...
...When one of these Short Eyes, played by Bruce Davison, is brought into the slam, he becomes a marked man...
Vol. 11 • January 1978 • No. 3
